Megan's Science Launch Pad

I'm an aspiring elementary school teacher who is excited and fired up about science! Below are some science-related sites that I feel would be helpful to use as a teacher and enhance my instruction.

Khan Academy
This site offers over 1,000 videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic to chemistry, biology, calculus, economics and physical science. Salman Khan, prior research analyst at a Bay Area investment fund, is the creator of this site and the instructor seen and heard in the videos. This site would be a wonderful and easy way for me to brush up on my science content knowledge. Some of the content is more appropriate for high

school, but even if I’m presenting easier material for younger students, I find that I still like to have an in-depth understanding of the content. Also, if I have a deeper understanding of the content, I could challenge and provide my higher achieving students with supplemental materials. I found the series of videos on fluids to be particularly helpful. Throughout his instruction, Salman uses a lot of pictures and labels to explain concepts. This gave me a lot of good ideas on how I could teach the states of matter in a way that would support ELL students. This site could also be very useful as a study tool for students. If a student was absent or had trouble understanding a concept, they could use the videos for self tutoring or review. Using videos to present content is one way I could differentiate instruction for my students.
http://www.khanacademy.org/

CIESE* The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education
This site provides a number of educational science and math curriculum and interdisciplinary projects for teachers to use. The CIESE collaborates with k-12 and university educators, researches,

policymakers and educational organizations to organize and develop the curriculum and projects. I would use this site to provide real data for students to investigate and use in order to come to an understanding of different concepts. For example, I could have students look at temperature in different regions and discover how elevation and pressure affect temperature. Unlike learning from data made up in textbooks, using real data will make learning more meaningful and motivate the students. The curriculum also provides activities that support different learning styles. I found one activity that had students building and using their own weather instruments. This is a great way to support the industrious needs of students to make and create with their hands.
http://www.ciese.org/

National Lab Day*The name may be a bit misleading, but this site is not about a one day hands-on science event. Rather, this site works to foster ongoing collaboration between volunteer scientists, community

members, and educators to bring discovery-based science experiences to students. I could use this site to connect with scientists in my area who are ready and willing to come into my classroom to help out with a demo or lesson. For example, if my class is studying electrical energy in circuits, I would love to have an electrical engineer come into my class and do a demonstration showing electric circuits. I may have sufficient knowledge of a content area, but I won’t be able to provide my students with the same depth and meaningfulness that a professional in the field could. Being able to acquire resources is another benefit of this site. I’ve recently read a wonderful article on how to explore heat energy and temperature through an inquiry process that starts from considering what variables may have accounted for the difference in temperature of each bear’s porridge in the story Goldilocks’ and the Three Bears. It would be helpful if I could gain the materials for this project through the system provided on this site.
http://www.nationallabday.org/

Science Friday*
This site provides video and audio feed from a weekly science talk show that’s part of NPR’s ‘Talk of the Nation’ program. The material is very student friendly and focuses on topics and scientific issues in the news. I could see myself using this site as an educational/relaxing Friday tool. I believe that it is really important for students to be aware citizens and to know the hot topics going on in the

science world. As a first year teacher, integrating real world issues into the mandatory science curriculum might be a little overwhelming for me at first. Using this site as a separate, fun Friday activity would enable me to provide my students with a meaningful way to experience and hear about scientific issues that affect the world they live in. I also could use this site as supplemental and enrichment material for my ELL students since some of the videos and news feed has been translated into Spanish.
http://sciencefriday.com/

Seeds of Science
Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading is a curriculum that was created by a team from Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education and Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. Its main purpose is to integrate science and literacy ins

truction and provide students with a special focus on reading and writing informational and nonfiction text genres. The curriculum aims for students to learn about science through doing, talking, reading, and writing. The site is wonderful because it allows you to explore the curriculum, and gives you access to all the strategy guides, ELL support materials, assessment materials, and book overviews. I see myself using this site to find books to use in my classroom to enhance my instruction and using some of the lessons for writing purposes. The site is laid out really well and very easy to navigate. The books are put into categories based on grade level and science topic. There is also a detailed description of each book and how the book could be used to support the lesson content. I highly recommend this site!
http://seedsofscience.org/curriculum/books.html

CAST Science Writer
This site is an online tool that supports middle and high school students in writing lab and science reports. However, I could also see it being used with 4th and 5th graders. I could see myself using this site as a way to support students who may be struggling in writing or need

certain modifications due to special needs. This program provides a nice scaffold of the writing process and takes an individual through drafting, revising, and editing a science report. An interesting feature of the writing tool is that it will read a student’s writing back to them and a student could also use the toolbar to get definitions and translations of words. These features could be especially helpful for ELL students.
http://sciencewriter.cast.org/welcome

Cool School Challenge
The Cool School Challenge is a program that aims to motivate students, teacher, and school districts in the Puget Sound area to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions school wide. In order to become a Cool School, an adult needs to volunteer to be a Challenge Coach to train, support, and oversee the interested students implement the program. Student

leaders than motivate and inspire the rest of the school to work at reducing the amount of CO2 emissions. The Cool School website displays which schools are participating as well as displays each schools CO2 reduction goals, actual anticipated CO2 reductions and special notes. If my school isn’t a part of this program, I would be very interested in using this site and becoming a Challenge Coach for my school. Even if my school doesn’t implement the program, I would use some of the resources provided, such as the classroom solid waste and recycling audit, to teach my students about the connections between waste and climate change and other related environmental curriculum. It’s important for students to become aware of how their lifestyle affects the world they live in.
http://www.coolschoolchallenge.org/

FOSSweb Full Option Science System
This site provides a multitude of science related modules, resources and fun activities for grades k-8. Each module contains online interactive activities, media, and additional content information. I could see myself taking advantage of the media resources provided by this site. In the air and weather module, there are some great images of the uses of air. The images are

helpful because along with each image are some questions that prompt students to think more critically. These pictures would be great to use in a first grade class where most students are just beginning to learn how to read. Each module also contains a list of great websites that provides further information. I could also see myself taking advantage of the vocabulary lists provided with each module. The vocabulary words and definitions are in both English and Spanish. There is also a supplemental section that shows how you can teach part of the module outdoors through hands on activities.
http://www.fossweb.com/

Exploratorium
This site provides teachers with several tools to make science more engaging with hands-on activities, webcasts, and a digital resource library. If I were teaching middle school, I would take advantage of the beautiful and very clear microscope images of cells and organisms. I could also see myself doing some of the physical science activities with my students. Several of the

activities involve creating and building something that you then use to learn about a concept. If I was able to get a guest scientist to help me implement the activity, I feel the projects would be very memorable for the students and support self-discovery learning.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/

Try Science
This site provides a wealth of resources to help teachers integrate science into the classroom. One of the resources that I could see myself using in my classroom are the connecting science to home activities. The site provides easy and fun activities for students to do at home with their parents or guardians. There is a step by step instructional guide for the parents to help them do the project with their kids. I believe that having parents connect with their child through

academic but fun activities strengthens the student-parent relationship and develops a team-like attitude for the students’ academic success. I also could see myself using the live cam resource to show migration and trying out some of the experiments, such as seeing how sound waves travel through different types of materials. Since I am undergoing getting my ELL endorsement, one of my favorite features of the website it that is can be translated into eight different languages!
http://tryscience.org/home.html

Science NetLinks
This site provides standards-based lesson plans that incorporate reviewed Internet resources, and can be selected according to specific benchmarks and grade ranges. The website is very easy to navigate and well organized. While there are some good lessons, the main reason I

would use this site would be for the Science Updates. Science Updates are 60-second radio programs presenting current science research, as well as responses to questions phoned into the Science Update hotline. It would be fun to call into the hotline as a class and ask a science question.
http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/index.php